It's being more honest with yourself and your own beliefs, though it certainly isn't more honest with your fellow bar patrons.

If you have a thing against lying (and I do), it's the lesser of two evils.

The inspiration was from professor Robert Thornton of Lehigh University, who came up with a creative way to write student "recommendations" that, if read literally, said quite directly that hiring this particular student was a very, very bad idea. If read figuratively, however, they sounded like glowing reviews, and indeed if you were expecting a good review you would think it were an absolutely wonderful review.

This was necessary because as a professor he was obligated to give students recommendations for their employers, but negative reviews have resulted in serious lawsuits in the past. Unwilling to compromise his morals, he got very creative with the English language instead of lying.

In that case, the reviews weren't meant for the student to ever see, but that is often unavoidable. He certainly did hope that the student's potential employer was capable of reading between the lines and comprehending the message.

He called his system L.I.A.R., if you want to search for it. They are pretty funny, and really do sound like positively glowing reviews until you look at exactly what they are actually saying.